492 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



Again, some seedsmen object to a Seed Station on the ground 

 that the Station might give to their rivals, perhaps by unfair use 

 of the Station's report, a reputation which has taken them years 

 to secure. The seedsmen in Germany were at first strongly 

 opposed to the establishment of Stations. Now, however, they 

 see the advantage of a properly conducted one, and in such an 

 important centre as Hamburg they use it freely in their dealings 

 with one another, and with their suppliers and customers. 



One seedsman admitted before the Committee that the 

 results of testing by a Continental expert and by his own expert 

 uniformly came very near one another. He knew, he said, when 

 he was buying worthless seed, and supposed the farmers in the 

 West of Ireland went on buying the " blowings " of grass seeds 

 because it paid them to sow them ! 



(b) Pedigree. — It is impossible by mere observation or by an 

 ordinary germinating test to determine the pedigree of a seed. 

 As the degree of fixation of the characteristics of an agricultural 

 variety is often of an indeterminate character, the pedigree 

 question is surrounded with natural difficulty, and often com- 

 plicated by trade interests. 



Confidence between buyer and seller, without which no trade 

 could exist, must be largely the determining factor in accepting 

 the statements as to the pedigree of a seed, especially where 

 field experiments are not carried out. The originator of an 

 agricultural or a trade variety would not be so foolish as 

 to supply seed not in keeping with his description, and direct 

 dealing with him should be guarantee enough, pending the 

 field result. 



Advocates of seed-testing have never contended that the 

 pedigree of a seed can be tested in the incubator. One well- 

 known firm brought before the Committee samples, in some 

 cases intentionally mixed, of known seeds with very different 

 pedigrees but so similar in appearance that no one, the firm 

 asserted, could distinguish them from one another. Apart from 

 the fact that there is a microscopical means of distinguishing 

 rape, swede, cabbage from one another, it appears to have been 

 overlooked that the common law could deal adequately with the 

 cases. If a seedsman who submitted oats, germinating 78 per 

 cent, and gathered in a rather wet autumn, to sulphur burning 

 to preserve them was, to my knowledge, fined about £150, it is 

 easy, if the law is reliable, to foretell the fate of a seedsman 



